A Critical and Comprehensive Sociologica

A Critical and Comprehensive Sociological Theory of Race and Racism Tanya Golash-Boza

Moreover, colorism prior to colonialism did not involve the biological conceptualization of race that emerged after European colonial domination of non-European populations.

Samuel Robert Friedman (1969:20) defined “struc- tural racism” as a “pattern of action in which one or more of the institutions of society has the power to throw on more burdens and give less benefits to the members of one race than another on an on-going basis.”

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (1997:469) builds upon the concept of “racialized social systems,” which he defines as “societies in which economic, politi- cal, social, and ideological levels are partially structured by the placement of actors in racial cat- egories.” Bonilla-Silva places particular emphasis on racial hierarchies and points to how these hierar- chies influence all social relations. Societies that have racialized social systems differentially allo- cate “economic, political, social, and even psycho- logical rewards to groups along racial lines” (Bonilla-Silva 1997:442).

During the era of slavery in the United States, “de jure white supremacy” (Mills 1997:73) pre- vailed. In contrast, the current period of de facto white supremacy is characterized by “the pretence that formal, juridical equality is sufficient to remedy inequities created on a foundation of several hun- dred years of racial privilege” (Mills 1997:73) and “an illusory color blindness that actually entrenches white privilege” (Mills 1997:77).

Patricia Hill Collins (2004:96) is also useful here as she explains, “When ideologies that defend racism become taken-for-granted and appear to be natural and inevitable, they become hegemonic. Few question them and the social hierar- chies they defend.” For Collins, “new racism reflects sedimented or past-in-present racial formations from prior historical periods” (Collins 2004:55).

—> Look up Gramscian hegemony

The work of Omi and Winant on “racial forma- tion” is particularly useful for an understanding of racial identities. Omi and Winant (1994:56) define racial formation as “the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, trans- formed, and destroyed,” and as a “process or histori- cally situated project.” They argue that the state (national government) is the primary site where race is constructed and contested.

Omi and Winant explore “how concepts of race are created and changed” and argue that “concepts of race structure both state and civil society” (Omi and Winant 1994:vii). They also say that “race” is the symbolic representation of social conflict expressed through physical characteristics. And it is variable over time.

race is “a template for the processes of marginalization that continue to shape social structures as well as collective and individual psyches” (Omi and Winant 2015:107).

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